(500) Days of Midsommar: What Midsommar Got Right About Shitty Ass Boyfriends That (500) Days of Summer Got Wrong.
Jack Reynor as Christian in Midsommar (2019)
Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Tom in (500) Days of Summer (2009)
*** SPOILER ALERT: IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN (500) DAYS OF SUMMER OR MIDSOMMAR, PLEASE BE AWARE THIS ESSAY CONTAINS SPOILERS. ***
If you have seen any of my social media or have spoken to me in person, then you are fully aware of how much I have been ranting and raving about the horror film, Midsommar. It’s one of my favorite films that came out last year, if not my absolute favorite. There are stellar acting performances worthy of Oscar nods, a unique and frightening plot with beautiful cinematography and a haunting score. Leave it to Ari Aster, a self-professed film geek who probably has erotic fantasies about invading the Criterion Collection closet, to deliver a great cinematic masterpiece while making it look effortless.
I’ve thought a lot about this film and when I think about this film, (500) Days of Summer comes into my head. Why is a decade old Rom-Com popping into my brain? Believe it or not, the two films are actually pretty similar when you break it down: both films mise en scene is bright and cheery, both have dance numbers, both have some iteration of the word “Summer” in the title, and both deal with being stuck in toxic relationships with Shitty Ass Boyfriends. The main difference? How these films tackle the Shitty Ass Boyfriend Dilemma.
The premise of the 2009 romantic comedy (500) Days of Summer is about a shitty ass dude named Tom (I mean honestly, what a perfect name for a Shitty Ass Boyfriend) who has a very convoluted idea of love and romance. Tom is constantly looking for meaning in every romantic film, gesture, and Joy Division song. He has the idea that soul mates are real, true love exists, love can happen at first sight, and the universe will come together to make such a holy union happen.
No surprise Tom would fall in love with a girl who doesn’t believe in any such thing. The girl that grabs his attention is Summer, a new administrative assistant at his office who one day sings along to the Smiths’ “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out” that is blasting out of his headphones and instantly falls in love with her because she happens to like the same band he likes—it’s destiny!
Before Tom and Summer start dating, the two of them get into a discussion about love and relationships. Off the bat, Summer states she doesn’t believe in love or any greeting card idea that such a thing even exists, despite working at a greeting card company and talking to the person who writes greeting cards about love in the office. Tom is flabbergasted, downright insulted. He tells Summer she is wrong, and how careless it is to not believe in love but she is unwavering in her stance. Shortly after this, Tom and Summer make-out in the copy room and thus starts the toxic courtship that is the basis for the film.
Early on in the film, Summer tells Tom she is not looking for anything serious—she merely sees Tom as someone to have fun with and wants to keep it casual. Tom, like many others before him, asserts he is okay with this even though it is extremely clear he is not okay with this. As the film goes on, Summer keeps reminding him she sees him as a “friend” and does different things to put a certain amount of distance between her and Tom to emphasize she is not serious with him. When Tom has the audacity to ask her the impossible task to always feel this way no matter what, Summer gives him a heavy dose of reality stating she cannot possibly keep a promise like that. Unfortunately for Summer, Tom sees every cute gesture, hangout, weird quirk, awkward sex position as a sign further cementing the idea that they were meant to be together and Summer is The One. Tom has stopped seeing Summer as a person. She has now transformed into a delusional fantasy that he spent his entire life concocting. The faceless woman in his dreams now has Summer’s face copy and pasted on it when it’s obvious she doesn’t fit in his picture.
Sure, Tom’s intentions initially seem like Nice Guy things—he’s madly in love with her and who wouldn’t want to be with an ol’ romantic like Tom who’s cute and in touch with his feelings? The mere fact that her personhood and her wishes are constantly disregarded to further feed Tom’s denial is not being a good boyfriend. It’s Shitty Ass Boyfriend behavior because any dude who stops seeing you as a person with your own thoughts, dreams, beliefs, and barriers doesn’t respect you. They only show support when it’s convenient for them, they overlook the bad and only recall the good. The Shitty Ass Boyfriend cannot handle the entire package.
Eventually Summer breaks off the relationship and later on gets engaged to another faceless man. Tom goes into a tail spin where he ends up drinking and sleeping all day, quits his job, and becomes completely unbearable until he has the strength to get up and revisit his other love—architecture. One day he meets up with Summer, after she has gotten married, wondering why not him. She states plainly she was never sure about him, but she was sure about her husband. The two part ways, it feels like Tom has grown as a person until he interviews for an architect job and runs into a beautiful woman named Autumn, starting the toxic cycle all over again.
On the other side of this spectrum, we have Midsommar—a film that touches on grief, bad relationships, cults, and lots and lots of mushrooms! The film starts out with the protagonist, Dani, who has her own mental health issues with anxiety, trying to desperately contact her parents after her sister, who suffers from bipolar disorder, sends an ominous message about ending her life and taking her parents with her. When no one answers and her sister doesn’t respond, she begins to get nervous. Like any rational person in a relationship, she calls her boyfriend to calm her down. Her boyfriend, Christian, immediately omits a vibe that he is annoyed with having the same conversation all the time. In his very annoyed, selfish way, he tells Dani that it’s another “stunt” and nothing has happened. To add salt to the wound, he tells his girlfriend that she enables this behavior so she should ignore her sister’s message and all will be well in the morning.
After providing no comfort to Dani, Dani contacts her friend complaining about Christian’s callousness. As many women have done time and time again, she tells her friend she doesn’t want to be a burden to him and she wishes she didn’t have to lean on him so much due to the special circumstances of her sister’s mental instability, but as her friend rightly insists that this was something he signed up for when he started dating Dani. As Dani is having this conversation with her friend, Christian is having another conversation with his friends about her neediness to constantly talk to him every time she has a problem. Christian makes it clear he is unhappy in the relationship and has spoken at length to his friends about breaking up with her. When one of his friends states the amount of times she calls him is downright “abusive”, the audience gets the full picture that Christian is a) an asshole and b) hangs out with other assholes. Right away it is established that anything that happens in this film to Christian and his friends will not be met with any sympathy. On the precipice of Christian making the decision to finally end things with Dani, he receives a call from her where she hysterically tells him her sister killed herself and her parents, putting a damper on the whole plan.
With the season changing from Winter to Summer, we see Dani has not coped well with the death of her entire family. She is in bed but can’t sleep. What’s worse is she is still with Christian, who we can only assume hasn’t provided the emotional support she needs to handle such a traumatic loss in her life. Christian pops in to check on her and to tell her he was going to step out for 45 minutes to go a party, which he tries to downplay because it’s apparent he’s tired of dealing with her but can’t leave her without looking like complete dick cheese. She asks if she can go. Like many of the scenes to come in the film, he tries to make it seem like he’s putting her best interest at heart by telling her “she doesn’t have to” but Dani insists on going.
At the party it comes to light from Christian’s friends that they are planning a big trip to Sweden in two weeks to attend a festival in Pelle’s village, one of Christian’s friends. This comes as a shock to Dani, who had no idea Christian was planning on attending without saying anything to her. Christian makes it seem as if he is not going, even though he had been planning it months before Dani’s entire family tragically died. After the party, Dani stays calm enough to try and have a reasonable discussion as to why Christian didn’t mention anything about the trip to her and how she is barely finding out about it when his plane departs in two weeks time. Instead of addressing any of the issues he has with the relationship, Christian remains a coward, desperately trying to protect his reputation by making himself out to be the victim. He says he feels attacked and doesn’t see it as a big deal. Eventually Dani feels bad for even bringing up the issue, which she had every right to be upset about, and apologizes for the act. In a terrible attempt to ease tensions and get himself out of the dog house, Christian invites Dani on the trip. Two weeks later the entire gang of Dani, Christian, and Christian’s friends head up to Sweden to embark on an adventure of working on their thesis statements and dreams of banging Swedish milk maids.
As the gang arrives, they realize that Sweden has a midnight sun, meaning that there is little to no darkness in a 24 hour cycle. When they trip on mushrooms and ask what time it is and someone says 9pm, when it looks like it’s 3pm, it’s no surprise that it’s stark and startling. Dani experiences a bad trip, at one point hallucinating about her dead sister, and randomly stumbles into the woods where she passes out. The next morning, they find her and wake her up, embarking on the second half of the journey to the village they will spending their time at.
On first arrival, it seems idyllic. Herds of villagers are wearing flower crowns, authentic pagan garments, dancing and singing, handing everyone wild strawberries (Was this a nod to Ingmar Bergman?) There are runes, lots of lush grass, authentic pagan artwork and a very cute bear in a cage! As everyone attempts to get their bearings, Pelle is the only one on the trip who remembers Dani’s birthday and as a gift, he hands her a drawing of her he had been working on. When he asks what Christian got her, she says he forgot and once again she blames herself for not reminding him before they left for Sweden. Pelle, proving himself to be the perfect gentleman, has to pull Christian aside and tell him he forgot his girlfriend’s birthday. Christian attempts to rectify the situation by giving her a cake, but Dani is not a fool and figures out pretty quickly Pelle was the one who reminded him. She tries to take it in stride, but is obviously annoyed and embarrassed his friend had to remind him of her birthday. Meanwhile a young, British couple, invited by another member of the commune, who are happily in love and engaged, hold up a metaphorical mirror to Dani and Christian of what their relationship will never be. Despite Dani and Christian’s glaring relationship issues, neither one of them have the chutzpah to pull the trigger and end the relationship.
As the story progresses, a young village girl, Maja, has taken a liking to Christian. She starts performing Pagan rituals such as hiding wood carvings under Christian’s bed, putting pubic hair in his food and menstrual blood in his drinks. While Christian has taken notice, he makes an effort to avoid her as to not give her any ideas that he has any interest in pursuing something with her.
As Christian’s group of male comrades start to randomly disappear, it becomes obvious something is not right on the commune. The villagers give somewhat plausible, vague explanations as to what’s happened to everyone and why they have disappeared. At a certain point, Dani and Christian are the only outsiders left, forcing them to take a hard look at their relationship. After Dani participates in a mushroom-filled Maypole dance, she ends up being the last woman standing and crowned as the new May Queen. Holding such a prestigious title means literally being held on a pedestal, leading the celebratory dinner, along with other rituals that the May Queen must participate in. While Dani is off doing this, Christian is taken aside and told that Maja wants to have sex with him and the elders of the village approve. Christian is dragged off to a hut, where he is drugged and lead to an altar with Maja, who is completely naked and ready for sex, along with a choir of naked women chanting.
As Dani is performing different rituals, she asks where Christian is. One of the villagers advises her he is in a hut but she shouldn’t go in the hut. Dani disobeys and goes to the hut anyway where she catches Christian having sex with Maja. She immediately runs out and throws up. She cries and wails as the women in the village cry and scream along with her as a sign of empathy. When Christian realizes what happened, he runs out of the hut and ends up stumbling upon multiple dead bodies of his friends. He is once again drugged and paralyzed.
When Christian comes to, he his advised he cannot move but can still see and hear. Dani is in a full May Queen garb, which has hundreds of colored flowers blooming on it. She is visibly miserable. It is a lottery as to who to sacrifice to purge evil out of the commune. Two people volunteer as human sacrifices, but now it’s up to Dani to make a choice between sacrificing Christian or another villager. The answer is never verbalized but we see Christian stuffed in a bear suit (spoiler: that cute bear did not make it) and wheeled into the Fire Temple. Along with the two volunteers, Christian’s friends are also wheeled into the Fire Temple. As the temple burns, the audience gets a final glimpse of Dani—a huge smile forms on her face as her boyfriend perishes in a burning temple.
As seen in both films, Tom and Christian are perfect examples of Shitty Ass Boyfriends. In (500) Days of Summer, Tom refuses to acknowledge Summer’s feelings towards their relationship, often times dismissing her issues to keep his dream of Summer alive while Christian in Midsommar is dismissive of Dani’s feelings because he is too selfish to fully support her—he can’t handle being with someone when the road gets bumpy. Both men are dismissive to these women in their lives and both have to do with a certain amount of selfishness. Tom wants to place Summer in a certain box because the concept of her is much more attractive than the reality of Summer. Instead of coming to terms with it, he is forcing a relationship with someone who clearly does not want one. On the other end of the spectrum, Christian wants out of a relationship but doesn’t want to appear to be the biggest asshole by leaving Dani right after she lost her family in a murder/suicide. Instead of doing the selfless thing and leaving a relationship he checked out of a long time ago, he stays with Dani to keep up appearances that he is not a jerk.
It’s well-established both men are garbage bins, however both films don’t handle this Shitty Ass Boyfriend dilemma in the same way. In (500) Days of Summer, the film ends with Tom reigniting the same type of behavior with a new girl by the name of Autumn (How clever—NOT!) To the many people who have watched the film, including myself, it isn’t clear who the shitty person is, at least not at first glance. There are plenty of posts online about how Tom is the victim of Summer’s selfishness, that Tom is an ideal boyfriend, with different types of people wishing they could have Tom as a partner. The way the film is written, it muddies the waters of how Tom should be perceived. Screenplay writing 101 states the protagonist should still be likable even if their flaws are reprehensible. You can have an anti-hero but there needs to be a redeeming quality to them otherwise what’s the point of watching? There are ways to handle this problem, however it feels as if the people who wrote this screenplay, Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, didn’t know how to make a movie like this while keeping Tom affable. In the end, the film goes too far in the “likable” direction, making it confusing for the viewer to see Tom in a less than flattering light. The film was written by two men, which creates a skewed perspective. If two women wrote this, it would be very easy to see the ugly side of Tom through the eyes of Summer or Tom’s character wouldn’t be so nuanced where his flawed thinking of relationships would shine brighter. There wouldn’t be any doubt that Tom is a Shitty Ass Boyfriend.
In Midsommar, it is obvious from the very first scene that Christian is a Shitty Ass Boyfriend by the way he talks to Dani over the phone. He is condescending, he sounds annoyed that Dani is calling him yet again about her troubled sister. It’s apparent this is one of many conversations Christian has had to endure with Dani and he’s fed up with having to play the role as the supportive boyfriend. His emotional maturity, or lack thereof, is illuminated throughout the entire film. He is constantly doing anything to get out of being a supportive person in Dani’s life, he gaslights her into thinking that her anger is unwarranted and she’s just being hysterical, he stays in a relationship he no longer wants to be in for fear of looking like the bad guy rather than ridding Dani of another dead thing she has to carry around. Aster does a phenomenal job of making Christian as flawed as possible so the viewer understands the kind of man Christian is and how the relationship is toxic. By making Christian’s characterization straight-forward, there is no hesitation to celebrate his climactic ending—burning alive in a bear suit. Aster revels in Christian’s assholery, hardly retreating from it but rather leaning into it to make the ending that much more satisfying to watch.
When we boil down both films, the women end up winning in the end. Despite the murkiness in (500) Days of Summer, Summer gets a happily ever after. She gets married to the man who is The One for her and makes amends with Tom. Summer finally gets closure from a relationship that seemed to still be haunting her as Tom was mending his broken heart. In Midsommar, Dani finds a new family who loves and accepts her. Most of all, it’s a family that provides unconditional support, something she lacked from Christian. Dani is finally able to put her past behind her, as she celebrates her new family and finally ends the toxic relationship with Christian that had been holding her back from finding true happiness.
Had (500) Days of Summer handled the Shitty Ass Boyfriend dilemma better, I think it would have made for a better film. It would have been more relatable and less cringey to watch. Midsommar, on the other hand, handled the Shitty Ass Boyfriend dilemma perfectly. It will be a considered a classic film. It is a film for anyone who has ever had to endure dating a straight male with the emotional maturity of a 12 year old.